Nadeshiko Japan, the Japanese men’s national soccer team… The chef who has been supporting the food of Japan’s national athletes is now in the textbooks
Sometimes it takes two days just to pack the food.
Nadeshiko Japan scored a dramatic comeback goal against Brazil in their second group game of the women’s soccer tournament at the Paris Olympics. The nutritional support for the girls is provided by Yoshiteru Nishi, who accompanies the team to the games as their personal chef.
He was the exclusive chef for the Japanese men’s national soccer team from the 2004 World Cup qualifying round in Germany to the 2010 World Cup in Qatar. He has supported the food of the players. He will be introduced as “a person who supports success” in English textbooks for junior high school students starting next spring,
I just did the usual things as a chef,” he said. I have been making meals that everyone is happy with. If the Japanese national team can achieve good results as a result of my efforts, I will be happy.
There are plenty of restaurants that customers have been coming to for 20 years. Nishi says with a bit of embarrassment that he has just been doing the same thing.
However, the team had to prepare meals for more than 50 people, including staff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they had to cook in a country where the ingredients and culture were different from those in Japan. There must have been a lot of hardship.
When I went to Iran, it was right around the time of Ramadan, when Muslims fast. All the markets were closed, so we could not procure ingredients locally. Even if I brought everything from Japan, I would have had to pay excess baggage fees. It was very difficult to prepare in advance what to bring as a priority.
Once he had gathered information, he would decide on a general menu and decide what to bring from Japan and what ingredients to procure locally.
The World Cup expedition can last up to a month. It takes two days just to pack the food for that long.
It sounds exhausting just to hear about it. It is totally different from running a restaurant in Japan.
If they are happy with my simmered dishes, I thought I would make futomakizushi as well. …… I am encouraged by the fact that they say it is delicious!
Before joining the Japan national team, Nishi was the executive chef at a restaurant in J Village, a new sports facility in Fukushima Prefecture. This is how he became the exclusive chef for the national team, and it is the athletes who use J Village. At J Village, he worked with a nutritionist to create menus, and learned why these ingredients were necessary and what was important to them. Based on that experience, Nishi plans menus for overseas expeditions.
Basically, I make sure to include meat and fish dishes,” he says. Also, it is important for soccer players to eat carbohydrates for energy, especially rice, so I prepare furikake, pickled plums, natto (fermented soybeans), etc. to make the rice more palatable.
